The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

People tend to under-report food poisoning: generally, we don’t visit the doctor for a small digestive disturbance or report our illness to the local health department unless it happens to be part of a widely-publicized outbreak. What if there were another way to learn about these outbreaks, though? What if health departments could use Yelp?

No, reviewers aren’t going to film twelve-second clips of themselves barfing. We hope. It’s possible, though, that people might mention illness in their reviews, even if they don’t go to the effort of calling their doctor or contacting the health department.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene worked with Yelp to obtain weekly data dumps of all eatery reviews in the city, then scanned those reviews for words that you might use when reviewing a place that made you ill. Keywords that they looked for included “sick,” “vomit,” “diarrhea,” and “food poisoning.”

500 reviews mentioned food poisoning that turned out to be an actual illness, and health department workers followed up with those customers. Out of the Yelp data dump, researchers found three outbreaks that had previously gone unreported, which sickened a total of 16 people. For smaller incidents where only one or two people reported that they became ill, researchers found that very few of these incidents had already been reported to the health department, and they would need to get the word out about how city residents and visitors can do that.

When you hesitate to mention that you became sick in your online review, reconsider! You might be warning other diners and helping solve public-health problems.